I'm a multiple-time entrepreneur, living and working in the heart of Silicon Valley for the past quarter century. Currently, I spend most of my time working on a new startup in the online education arena. I've got a BA in political science and an MBA from Stanford. Having been around technology and business on the leading edge, I write mostly about what's new and what's coming for companies and the country. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ You can e-mail me at forbes_at_rogodotnet

PS4: This Looks Familiar

It’s no secret that the console-gaming business hasn’t exactly been setting the world on fire of late. IDC says that as of January Sony’s PS3 (77 million sold) surpassed Microsoft’s Xbox 360 (at 76 million). But the consoles were introduced in 2006 and 2005 respectively, and not a lot of those sales have come lately. Today’s announcement of the PS4 — Sony’s next-generation console — comes after the longest period between product introductions in the history of the videogame industry. It’s the struggling Japanese giant’s latest, best hope to recapture some of the magic that vaulted it to the top when the original Playstation launched in 1994. But is it too late to matter?

First, let’s get some praise out of the way. The technical capabilities of PS4 look terrific. (The machine itself? Who knows. In a two-hour event Sony never did manage to display a Ps4!) Sony showed off plenty of demos at the introduction and I have no doubt some of the finished product will be state-of-the-art console gaming. Additionally, the company is saying all the right things about online gaming and using their handheld Vita as a “client” device to the PS4, giving Sony similar capabilities to what Nintendo has delivered with its recently introduced Wii U.

But the Wii U is kind of a bust, setting the wrong kind of records for console sales (as in record lows). That’s especially troublesome for a new product. And while Sony is unlikely to do the same kind of face-first fall that Nintendo has, it’s worth remembering that in the last round the winning console was, in fact, Nintendo’s Wii, which recently surpassed the 100 million mark. Nintendo won for two primary reasons (1) it had the first-of-its-kind Wii Remote controller, which allowed you to do things like swing a virtual tennis racket through the air or pretend to bowl and (2) largely as a result of that controller it reached a number of people who weren’t traditional gamers, both young and old.

Wii, in short, was revolutionary and both Sony and Microsoft had to react. Sony’s Move controller was a knockoff. Microsoft’s Kinect, while imperfect, was a revelation: control without any controller at all. Watching today’s PS4 announcement, one couldn’t help but wonder where the equivalent of Kinect was. What’s the one feature that’s going to get people to run out and buy PS4; that’s going to reignite interest in console gaming? It simply wasn’t there.

Instead, we saw a lot of game developers showing unfinished demos and Sony touting as one of its big “gets” that Blizzard Entertainment, part of gaming giant Activision, will bring the hugely popular Diablo III to the PS4. Of course, they’ll also bring it to the aging PS3. Oh, and Diablo 3 is hugely popular because it’s already been available on PC and Mac since last May. This isn’t something new, it’s something kind of nice. And something “kind of nice” is actually where the center of gaming has moved in the past couple of years.

Which brings us back to that second Nintendo success factor: more people are gaming than ever. It’s just that now they’re just doing it on smartphones and iPads. Phenomena like Angry Birds and Words with Friends may not have the spectacular graphics of a PS4 game, but they have sometimes hundreds of millions of players worldwide. And the commitment can be as little as downloading an ad-supported app to your phone while waiting on line at the DMV. For Activision, which owns blockbusters like the Call of Duty franchise (a single title makes hundreds of millions) and the aging but still very profitable World of Warcraft multi-player game (with 10 million people paying a monthly subscription), this trend hasn’t been especially important. For everyone else in gaming, including struggling Zynga, it has been.

So while PS4 looks cool, it looks a lot like a better PS3, without a killer feature like the BluRay drive that helped bring the previous console into many homes the last time around. The controller isn’t especially exciting and the online capabilities are mostly a refinement of what you can already get. In the meantime, the barbarians are already in people’s pockets and purses and are threatening the living room, too. A startup called Ouya raised more than $10 million on Kickstarter to create a new console that will play Android games and promises to come out with a new model every year for $99. (Sony didn’t announce pricing). They launch this June with a slate of 500 games. Maybe they won’t all be Diablo 3, but then you’ll probably be able to pick up 30 of them for less than the cost of one Ps4 title.

Apple also looms in the background. The iPhone is especially successful with casual gamers and the co-founder of online gaming company Valve thinks Apple could “roll the console guys really easily” using a device like the AppleTV as the way into the living room. Whether that’s in the offing, the reality is that competition for people’s dollars is high, with options like tablets not existing a few years ago. And competition for attention spans is even higher thanks to app stores, Facebook games, Netflix, and endless-channel television. PS4 might be technically great. But great might not be good enough.

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You’re very wrong about the Kinect. It has sold over 24 million of the peripheral meaning about a third of the Xbox community purchased one. Guess what is the 360′s best selling game? It isn’t Call of Duty or Halo, it is Kinect Adventures. Granted, it is a pack-in title for Kinect, but it still goes to show that it has in fact been fairly successful and why both parties are not dropping their camera peripherals anytime soon. Also, Wii launched at $249.99 and even though the Gamecube was affordable and family friendly, it was not as successful. Price of course is a factor, I’m just clarifying.

Lol the nerve to mention Ouya as a threat…PS4 and 720 are both doing what should be expected, becoming media centers and more than just game consoles. Yes Kinect was cool…If you’re 12 or under…PS4′s audience in particular are teens and adults (mostly male), so what do you expect them to do, develop virtual reality?

I didn’t expect that, but perhaps doing something with Oculus Rift would’ve been the great leap forward this announcement lacked. I agree with you the market for PS4 is hardcore gamers. I’m not sure that market is going to be as robust this time around as it was the last time (and I’d say Sony agrees given all the nice words about continuing support for PS3).

I stopped reading as soon as you mentioned Angry f’ing Birds. No one, I repeat, no one who plays console games like Skyrim and Alan Wake is going to get bored of them and switch to mobile and tablet games. Hundreds of millions of people play Angry Birds because there are hundreds of millions of smartphones. These are games that people play on their lunch breaks at work. No one gets immersed in them. Gameplaywise, they have nothing on console games. Mobile games represent a regression in gaming.

This article is just wrong. I tried to read it through but after “you’ll probably be able to pick up 30 of them for less than the cost of one Ps4 title” I just couldnt finish the last paragraph. I can’t speak for anyone but myself still im sure most Forbes readers prefer quality over quantity.

Comparing Sony’s new hardware to Ouya , seriously ? Suggesting the conference failed to impress because of a lack of a Kinect -like device is insanity.

There was no mention of the cloud gaming, or the fact that the entire library of every PS game from the original system up until now will eventually be available through the new hardware which I believe will be good selling points along with the other innovations thew hardware has going for it

You are correct, I play phone games while waiting around, commuting to work, whatever. When I get home I fire up the Xbox and play games I cannot even come close to replicating on a cell phone limiting screen. I believe the real hurdle for these new consoles (besides a new gotta have widgit) is the availability to play current generation games. Some of us have amassed quite the library of games over the last 6 years and to abandon them is silly.

Poor writeup and extremely biased with little facts to prove opinions. They didn’t even show the actual system or the price and you are already condemning it. The announcement was only a taste of what is to come of PS4. Obviously they didn’t want to release all the information in regards to the console at once – maybe as a business strategy in both marketing and market competition (Microsoft). This is a Forbes article, so you should know something about business right?

You also mentioned Diablo III but failed to mention any of the other games they presented like Watch Dogs, Bungie’s Destiny, Deep Down, Killzone Shadow Fall, Knack, or Drive Club (a racing game in which the detail is down to the suede and carpet having a fiber direction when they’ve been brushed or touched by your digital player) – all of which are new and PS4 exclusive. Not to mention Sony confirmed every major game developer would be making games for the new system.

They also announced that PS4 would be the launch of the fastest internet gaming in the world and would allow for your PS Network friends to not only watch the game you are playing as you play it, but to also take over your controller and play for you from across the country on their own system. Games will no longer have long load times and when you purchase a game online, you will be able to play it in full while it downloads.

Your article lacks major factual information with major bias, including your article title “Ps4: This looks familiar.” In reality, if you would have mentioned or even looked at the features mentioned in the presentation, you would easily have realized there is relatively no familiarity at all, except for the fact that Sony is strategically layering the information about its new product.

I understand that you are entitled to your opinion in this article format, but just realize because you used little factual information, your article looks lazy and your opinion absolutely sucks.